We love sports. It keeps us healthy both physically and mentally. However, playing sports can often lead to sports injury. Serious sports injury might cast shadow on our memories as not all sports are right for everyone. In order to reduce the risks of sports injury, we just need to be smart about how we choose the right one.

	Sit Ups Doing sit-ups for 30 minutes can reach target heart rates. However, you will easily injure your back if you do it improperly. Doing sit ups is a good way to get stronger abdominal muscles, but not reducing them. Recommendation: Try not to exceed 10 minutes when doing sit up training.
	Long distance running Running can help you lose weight. Running involves all the muscles in the body and is great for your heart and circulation. However, you will easily get your knees and ankles injured if you are overweight. Recommendation: For people who are overweight or obese, try not to lose weight by running, choose jogging, cycling or swimming instead.
	Brisk walking Brisk walking is a great way to get into shape and stay fit especially for overweight. Brisk walking exerts less strain on the knees because the knees only experience the reaction force between your weight and ground surface. Remark: Avoid brisk walking for a long time if you experience hip strain.
	Tennis More and more people fall in love with playing tennis. Many believe that they don’t need to take lesson in order to play tennis. Unfortunately, poor technique increases the chance of getting injuries or even “tennis elbow”. Recommendation: For beginners, he or she must learn proper technique from professional tennis coach in order to avoid getting “tennis elbow”.
	Badminton When we play badminton we use the muscle of the shoulder joint every time we swing the racket but not so much with the wrist muscle. If you hit a smash shot with your wrist, you will easily get wrist injury. Recommendation: Have a professional badminton coach assess the way you play. The more you improve your techniques, the lower the risk of having sports injury.
	Exercise equipment Carefully read the manual or instruction of using exercise equipment in a gym. Learn to understand your ability, limitation, and current fitness level before using any exercise equipment.

Learning how to use exercise equipment at the gym, you will also be able to receive the full benefits of the equipment use.

The following are things you can do to dramatically reduce the risks of sports injury:

1. Intensity:

Intensity is the amount of physiological activity you experience in your body including heart rate, respiration etc. The challenge with intensity is that there is no ideal intensity for everyone; depending on your physical and psychological make-up. For those who want to burn fat or improve cardiovascular endurance, your heart rate should reach to:

Target heart rate = (220 – your age) X0.6- (220 – your age) X 0.8

For example: 40 years old, his/her target heart rate = (220-40) X 0.6 - (220-40) X 0.6 0.8=108 -136bpm (beat/minute)

2. Duration

Deciding whether to exercise longer depends on your goals and your current fitness level. You should start exercising in small amounts until you slowly build up exercise tolerance. You can start exercising for 5 to 10 minutes, and gradually increase the duration. Your final goal should be aerobically exercise for 20 minutes per day, 2-3 times a week.?

3. Warm up exercise

Doing warm up exercise basically means to warm up the muscles in your body so that they will be able to cope with the workouts that you are about to undertake. Even though you may do the same exercise every day, there are times when your muscles are cool as they are at rest and not engaging in any activity. Therefore, stretching cool muscles will inevitably cause injuries. In order to reduce the risk of injury, warm up exercises can be done 10 to 15 minutes before the actual workouts.

4. Proper warm up

1) Warming up means to warm up your muscles, and begin to sweat. There are two kinds of warming up; one is warming up actively. You can do light exercises such as jogging, jumping rope and cycling etc. The other is warming up passively; you can stay in a relatively high temperature room to warm up your muscle.

2) Stretching: stretching cool muscles will easily cause injuries. After warming up your muscles, you can stretch different muscle groups and conjunctive tissues from head to toes.

3) Joint stretching: stretching joints are important to promote flexibility to joint motion. Try not to rotate the head too fast or stretching your joints with weights.

4) When playing basketball, basketball shooting should not be considered as part of your warm up exercise. It can be done after you warm up your muscles.

5. Exercise and Emotions

It is not recommended to have extreme workouts if you are in a very bad mood. Pushing too hard on yourself physically might actually detract from health and even your longevity.

Avoid doing exercise with following conditions:

1) Extremely tired or sleepy

2) Bad mood

3) Extremely nervous, anxious, lack of concentration

4) Negative emotions

6. Exercise and Weather

Some people exercise no matter what the weather is like. You should take extra precautions when exercising under these conditions:

1) Winter: Dress enough layers to keep you warm.

2) Summer: The combination of high temperature and humidity make it hard to release heat from our bodies. You may experience heat stroke, dehydration and sun burn.

3) High altitude: At higher altitudes, less oxygen results in the heart working harder. It can lead to altitude sickness, also known as Acute Mountain Sickness (AMS).

4) Diving: Water gets very cold in deep ocean, and if there is a rapid drop in pressure, decompression sickness occurred.

To sum up, make sure you fully observe the workout environment, have full preparation regarding your physical and psychological profile; and try not to hurt yourself for being overconfident.

7. Muscle soreness after exercise

When doing exercise, lactic acid is produce in the muscles when you are taking in oxygen. Buildup of lactic acid results in muscle soreness. It is normal, and the soreness will subside automatically. No specific action required.

Recommendation: If you experience muscle soreness, do not stop exercising. It’s best to reduce your intensity for 1 to 2 days after feeling soreness, and increase back to normal intensity the day after. The soreness will gradually go away.

8. Method to reduce muscle soreness

When you try a new activity, start with low intensity, low frequency schedule, and slowly increase your intensity. Remember to do warm up and light stretching exercise before and after workouts. Other treatment options include heat therapy and moist heat therapy to help remove the lactic acid buildup, and reduce the intensity of muscle soreness.

9. First -aid for sport injury

In cases of sore and swollen muscles and joints, the most common first-aid remedies tend to be the application of cold packs. Place a nice pack on the sore muscle and leave for 10 minutes, 2 or 3 cycles of this may help reduce the soreness and swelling. Try not to applying the ice packs for more than 10 minutes.

10. Rehabilitation after sport injury

Don’t make the mistake of returning to your exercise too soon. You must be sure that you can compete without the potential of causing further injury, or damage to the injured area.

1) Find the cause of your injury. If it is because improper posture or technique cause you injured, correct it.

2) Be prepared. It takes time for both of your physical and technical skill to recover after injury. Initially, don’t push your body too much. This will only lead to further exacerbation of the injury. Set exercises to target specific goals. A two weeks rehabilitation plan is recommended to help you get back on track.